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Event Vendors: 3 Growth Marketing Tips For Event Startups

Growth marketing conversations always have a lot of talk about tactics. Specific “hacks” to cut corners to try to get results faster.

It’s not something to rule out when looking for immediate results. But if you want to see long term, sustainable success, then you need to think big picture and lay down a true strategy. Because once that tactic is done working, it’s back to the drawing board.

Tactics add fuel to your fire, but without a foundational strategy, your success will burn out quickly.

Step 1: The Fundamental Foundation

You gotta know your customers.

What are their pains?

Desires?

What conversations are they having with friends and colleagues?

What questions are they asking, what help are they looking for?

That’s how you build a connection with them. By joining the conversation that they’re already having, and answering the questions and problems that they have in front of them.

Then you need Message-Market Match. And for the sake of brevity, I’ll tie that to offer-market match.

You need to position your messaging and offers so that they resonate with your target audience, get them interested, and get them taking action.

Without that message-market match, you can’t get anywhere.

Step 2: Building your system

Growth marketing is about understanding that you can’t propose to a stranger in a bar and expect them to say yes.

And if there is someone doing that out there, they probably have a pretty low conversion rate.

You need to understand that to turn strangers into customers, it’s going to happen over a series of steps and sequences. And you need to control that sequence strategically, as best you can.

Have you seen the movie Training Day with Denzel Washington? This is chess, it ain’t checkers.

You have to understand where your customer is in their journey and where they are in your sales funnel and match your message with them. Have empathy for their situation.

Do they even know that they have a problem yet?

Do they know what solution they need?

Have they met your brand yet, do you have any equity in that relationship?

All of these things play a factor in what kind of message you put in front of that person at that time, and what their next step should be.

By mapping every step, you can set up your audience’s mindset to want to become your customer when the time is right for them to buy what you have, instead of you having to “sell” them on anything.

And within that system, you need to aim high.

Let me explain… Did you know that only 3% of any given market is ready to buy right now? So if you are only going after the immediate sale, you’re losing 97% of your audience right off the bat.

So aim high in the sales funnel, at the beginning of their customer journey, and build a relationship with people.

Then when it comes time for them to need what you have to offer, you’re already going to be the brand that they want to do business with. They’re not searching Google for the product anymore, they’re searching Google for your name. Or better yet going directly to your website or product.

And that’s how you win in the big picture.

Step 3: Get to work

Now that you have your plan in place, we can get into tactics and getting shit done.

We like to say that activity equals visibility equals opportunity. And that success loves speed.

You can’t worry about being perfect right out of the gate. Get your car on the track and course correct along the way.

In today’s world, you need to be putting yourself out there.

That means creating content on your blog, social media channels, email, or wherever your audience is consuming information…creating digital assets that will get found by your customers during their normal routines. And creating your content in a way that your audience becomes interested and engaged enough to stay connected to you and learn more.

That content is also what will fuel word of mouth about your business.

People are sharing digital content all day long.

Whether it’s social media, email, text messages, DMs…but if you’re not giving them content to share, then don’t expect to see referrals and word of mouth help your business grow very far.

Practical Steps:

A practical tip for you to take home that every one of you can do right now is to make a list of every question that you’ve ever been asked about your business and the problems that your business helps people solve, and think about it from a customer perspective. This isn’t to talk about yourself, it’s to help them.

Then take that list, and start answering those questions one at a time on your blog, in a YouTube video, or on a social media channel.

That will help you build some momentum as a content creator and get you initial traction with your audience.

Change The Rules

Last thing I’m gonna leave you with…

Have you ever seen a little kid playing a game and start losing? What happens next?

When they’re losing, they just say “I’m gonna do ‘this’ even though it’s against the rules.” But it allows them to win because in their mind they aren’t going to lose. They’re gonna change the game so they can win.

Growth marketing is about results. Turning strangers into customers with a sequential system. But there are no rules on how you can get to those results (as long as you stay within the laws and general ethics of society of course).

So think about what arbitrary rules you can change to win more in your business?

How can you stack the deck in your favor so your competition doesn’t stand a chance?

Now go get to work and build your system and stack the deck in your favor.